Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/82

Rh any Indian wigwam as on the softest couch of "la belle France."

With the change of dominion came a change of conduct. No longer were the forts attractive: the Indians were snubbed and abused by the red-coats; their savage conceit and dignity was outraged and contemned. English fur traders cheated them; settlers invaded their best lands, and cut down their forests. "Who goes there?" and a musket at the charge was now the orthodox reception at the forts; conciliation was turned to insult, flattery to repulsion, and the usual "presents" altogether ceased. The difference was not so much a premeditated invention of the government to injure the Indian, as it was a difference in the nature of the new rulers. The English were blunt and stern, because it was their nature; they truckled to no one; asked no favours and gave none. There was an element of diplomacy, however, in the French conduct towards the Indians, which served them better than resort to the logic of the bayonet, and it would have been wiser for British supremacy, and have averted several disasters which followed the defeat of the French, had their conciliatory policy been adopted. Rh